American Handgunner articles from September 1999

American Handgunner archives from September 1999

SPEAK OUT.
September 1, 1999... Mail Campaign Thank you sincerely for the The Ayoob Files, "School Shootings: The Truth Exposed" in the July/August issue. Factual articles of this caliber are incredibly valuable to help persuade "the other side" that their negative...

Origin Of The Super Bullet.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... It is no secret that both match and hunting bullets have significantly improved over the last 50 years or so. Perhaps the most important improvements can be described as fine tuning a bullet in terms of accuracy and performance. In the...

Mo Manuals, Mo Betta.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... You can't go wrong owning all of the current, up-to-date load manuals on the market. You can go wrong using some of the old ones due to changes in components. Any manual over 10 years old should be viewed with some degree of caution and loads...

BIGGER IS BETTER.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Handguns-- and now the term "handrifles" is sometimes appropriate-- are getting bigger, some to the extent of being ridiculous. I've had requests, which I did not fill, for 30" barreled XPs on pistol stocks. But how do you carry these big...

A STING OPERATION.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... The new T/C rubber grip and forend for the Encore are out and in service. I think you'll find these an improvement over both the wood or Rynite grips. I've been using one on a .50 Alaskan loaded with 650 and 750 grain bullets at around 1,500...

SST BULLETS.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Hornady introduced the AMAX as a match bullet and found it extremely successful. Next was the VMAX varmint bullet, another success. The existent Hornady soft point InterLock bullet had enjoyed an enviable reputation and the combination of the...

Will The Real Inventor Please Stand Up?(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Frankly, 50 years ago it was much easier for a hunter or handloader to pick a bullet. There weren't that many to pick from and most all of them worked okay. Now we have so many to pick from that we don't know what to pick. Take the popular...

Yes, And We All Have One Of Those Too.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Bullet design is a subject on which everyone has an opinion. That opinion is usually taken from the gunrags and may or may not be based on any actual kills or any digging in the goo to find out what really happened. Most guys want the...

Mismatched Match Bullets.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... If you use a .300 Win. Mag. Bullet in a .308, you will probably be disappointed in its game performance. It is likely to produce a wound similar to a full metal jacketed bullet. Likewise, if you reverse the situation-- particularly if you...

A Road Paved With Berettas.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Beginning in 1979 and continuing through the early '80s, the U.S. military began a test for a new service pistol. By now we all know the details of this story--the Beretta M92 became the replacement for the Model 1911. Like many fans of John...

A SLOW WARMING TREND.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Like many avid handgunners, I did not warm up to the Beretta M92 very quickly. In fact, I avoided it for some time. But contracts for training some Defense Department personnel forced me to get a Beretta M92 and learn to use it well. When...

And Now, Without Mincing Words, The World's Most Reliable Handgun Is...(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... The only handgun that I would buy over the counter brand new, load with ammo and stick in my belt for self-defense without test firing to insure that it is totally reliable is the Beretta M92. Given a chance, I would always prefer to test fire...

Then Again, There Is That Pesky Locking Block.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Note that when the locking block breaks, the M92 will not work. This could be considered a "feeding failure," if you want to call it that. Again, few issue pistols of any type are fired as much as the 20,000 rounds I put through one M92. Nearly...

OFFICIAL Government Issue.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Issue of the Beretta M9 pistol to U.S. military forces has been one of the better small arms success stories of the 20th century. After a slightly bumpy start, the Beretta M9 has proven to be everything that the Army promised. Like all...

ELITE IS AS ELITE DOES.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... The Beretta Elite pistol is fitted with a stainless steel 4.7" barrel. This does away with the famous Beretta trademark look of the barrel sticking out past the end of the slide. I feel that the appearance of the Elite barrel length is a plus...

He's The Top Gun In The Symphony Orchestra.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... As the honored bass trombonist of the Simphonica Mayor de Uruguay, Paolo Esperanza felt it was his duty to add a little excitement to his orchestra's rendition of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Paolo was especially fond of the simulated cannon...

No Wonder Cowboys Wear Those Things.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Steve Mackins just thought a fellow motorist needed help when his truck was hailed to stop on a rural road near Kings Mountain, N.C. It turned out the other guy didn't want help, just money-- and wanted it enough to shoot Steve in the belly for...

AND AT LEAST TWO COUNTS OF FELONY STUPID.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Within minutes after robbing a U.S. Bank in Sacramento, Bruce Charles Davis, 36, brought back $293 of the loot and told bank officials he was interested in a job in bank security. Nobody could figure out why he came back-- maybe because he'd...

PURSUIT AND DEATH: A CASE IN CONNECTICUT.
September 1, 1999... Situation: Danger grows higher as a convicted felon tries to run over police officers. Lesson: The most righteous action can still bring cruel accusations. It is after one o'clock in the morning on February 12, 1992, in one of the...

TOP TEN Y2K SURVIVAL KIT.
September 1, 1999... FOR THE URBAN DWELLER, HERE ARE THE BASIC THINGS YOU'LL NEED IF THE LIGHTS GO OUT AND THE THUNDER ROLLS IN WITH THE NEW MILLENNIUM. If Two letters, big word. How man's dreams and hopes, fears and frustrations, have hinged on this...

DAVE'S Rules For Excruciatingly Correct Gun Carrying.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Mark Moritz, a piquant observer of the handgun scene and former contributor to American Handgunner, once noted that required reading for gun owners should include Judith Martin's Miss Manners Guide To Excruciatingly Good Manners. Massad Ayoob...

Discretion Is The Better Part Of Ankle Holsters.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Be discreet. Anyone who feels the need to constantly let others know they are carrying probably isn't mature enough to have a permit. There may be those among your family and associates who have a legitimate need to know you are armed. That's...

THE BIG "C" WORD.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Keep your concealed firearm concealed. A concealed carry permit means what it says. Some police departments have strict guidelines for carrying off-duty. If they get a "man with a gun" call and it turns out the subject is an off-duty or...

A Black Belt In Gunfighting.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Learn to use your sidearm safely and competently. Safe gunhanding and shooting skills are not separate from defensive tactics, they are part of defensive tactics. It seems to be the nature of things that martial artist black belts don't get...

Yes Sir, Mr. Anderson, You Are Absolutely Right.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Be polite. "An armed society is a polite society" is usually attributed to science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. I suppose this refers to aristocratic eras in history when gentlemen carried swords, where courtesy was expected and demanded,...

Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Recently I received a letter from a redder taking me to task over my comments about clean burning powder in the Nov/Dec issue. He said, "Charles Petty could care less about how clean a load shoots. His prime concern is accuracy. I would like to...

THE GRUNGE FACTOR.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Sometimes shooters complain about unburned powder, the grunge that builds up in a semiauto. It doesn't matter what powder you use-- there will always be a small amount of unburned powder. You can see this easily by putting a sheet on the...

THE SMOKE IN SMOKELESS.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... "But Charlie," you shout, "how can there be smoke? We use smokeless powder." True, but what's that cloudy stuff in the air then? The first time there was any really dramatic evidence of "cleaner" burning powder was when Winchester...

A UNIQUE TRIBUTE.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Unique is an excellent mid-range powder, but it doesn't work well in reduced loads. Most of the slower burning powders don't. Probably the most dramatic example of this is found with Alliant's 2400. That was the powder Elmer Keith used to turn...

The Magic Of Mag-Na-Port.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Quite a few years have gone under the bridge since Larry Kelly designed and patented the Mag-Na-Port process for using an electric discharge machine (EDM) to cut ports into the barrel of a gun to reduce recoil. Even though the process was...

My Long Lost Buddy And His Oscillating EDM.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Still, I wondered if there was any way to improve the efficiency of the original design of an EDM cut port without adding a heavy compensator. Being a tool and die maker at the time, I was well familiar with an EDM machine. I ran one every...

It Took A Swiss Mathematician To Figure It Out.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Leading Edge coils it HyperPort, and their literature quotes the Bernoulli Effect. As I understand it, Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician who first proved that if the surface area of a flow is reduced, the velocity of the gas is increased. ...

The Last Breath Of Hope For Humankind.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... As this is being written in May, we are all working hard to try and eliminate any Y2K computer problems. I mentioned in a previous article that one should be looking into any problems that might be lurking around most anything that is...

The Long And The Short Of Cartridges.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Modern cartridges are far superior to those made at the end of the 19th century in terms of the quality of brass, powders, primers and bullets. In terms of basic design, though, it is astonishing how little has changed. Design changes have for...

Mad Dogs And Stupid Cartridge Names.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... The key to understanding how cartridges are named is to realize that there is no rhyme or reason to it, and if you try to find a consistent pattern, you will go barking mad. In the world of cartridges .32s are actually .3 is, .38s are actually...

A BOTTLENECK PROBLEM.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Handgun cartridge cases are for the most part straight or slightly tapered, but again there are exceptions. The .44/40, designed by Winchester for its model 73 rifle, was soon adapted to the Colt single-action revolver and proved tremendously...

By God, An Honest .45.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... The honest old .45 Colt is a true .45 Its name won't cause trouble unless you're at a cowboy match and inadvertently refer to it as the .45 Long Colt. Then you can expect to be lectured at tedious length about how there is no .45 Short Colt and...

Droopy Pants And Pot Bellies.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Have you ever noticed in those glossy, fancy holster catalogs all the models are well-starched, nary a hair out of place and the leather they sport fits trimly, with no bulges, droopy pants or pot bellies getting in the way? I've always...

IT MAY NOT BE GOOD, BUT AT LEAST IT'S UGLY.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... After giving up on finding a factory issued belt, holster and gizmo-rig for my desert walks, I created my own and it didn't come from the pages of a glossy color catalog. Now I'm not saying it couldn't have, but what I did was combine...

Haugen's Holsters Handily Hold Handguns.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... It's funny how things happen. His Editor-ness, Cameron Hopkins, asked me to look-up a fellow named Jerry Lee Haugen. Jerry Lee is another ex-cop in the holster business. Most such gents are decidedly not "former cops," unlike Marines who are...

WHEN IS A TAURIS NOT A FORD?(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... One of the nice things about doing this column is that I can bring some small shops to the attention of the readers. These small, usually one-man or woman shops, don't normally get the attention given to the bigger factories. That's a shame....

Gentlemen Choose Your Weapons IDPA Mid-Winter Nationals.
September 1, 1999... Focusing on self-defense shooting, this indoor tournament is hosted by Smith & Wesson with evening receptions, museum visits and factory tours included. It may be the best match you've never heard of. There's a place for every type of carry...

THE TRUTH ABOUT IDPA.
September 1, 1999... It may not be tactically correct, but it's not a pure game like IPSC. Virtually all handgunning sports have their roots in the martial use of sidearms. Not surprising, given that the handgun was designed for close range employment against...

COLT RIDES AGAIN!
September 1, 1999... The new Colt Cowboy single-action lives and breathes the legend, but with a transfer bar safety and an affordable price. The year 1873 saw the arrival of the world's most perfectly balanced sixgun, the Colt Single Action Army. Unlike...

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF ROOKIE JITTERS.
September 1, 1999... We take you through Colt's two-day armorer's course for the O-frame pistol. In the beginning there was Samuel Colt, and 75 years later John M. Browning had raised the repeating sidearm to the technical equivalent of the Sixth Day. Although...

LIMITLESS POTENTIAL.
September 1, 1999... Arizona pistolsmith Don Golembieski pulls out all the stops on this IPSC Limited Class competition pistol based on an Infinity Firearms .40 S&W. There are a lot of reasons to hate Don Golembieski. He's virtually a shooting god, good at...

POINTS OF PERFECTION.
September 1, 1999... Hnifemaker chris Reeve accepts hail the best. Chris Reeve is chasing a demon today. It's the same one he chased yesterday. It's the same one he chases everyday. The demon's name is Perfection. While the head of a pin is small in most...

SHOTTING THE MARTIAL COLTS.
September 1, 1999... No, you can't shoot a Battle Of Little Big Horn survivor, but there are some beautiful replicas from United States Patent Fire Arms Co. The year was 1870, just five years after the War Between The States, and the United States Army was...

Elemental FUSION.
September 1, 1999... We live in a lite world--lite salad dressing, lite cheese, lite beer, even lite mayo. So it only seems natural that into this often futile effort at waist trimming, someone, somewhere, would come up with the lite handgun. Lite as in really...

REAL SIXGUN LEATHER FROM GENUINE CRAFTSMEN.
September 1, 1999... We continue this issue looking at some of the finest leather extant for single-action sixguns, a double-action sixgun and even a semiauto or two. Again, this is the real thing- leather made from real animal hides- no plastic, no polymer, no...

ADC MODEL I.
September 1, 1999... A big bore alternative for deep concealment. The Remington over-under Derringer was introduced in 1866 and remained in production until the exigencies of World War II forced the firearms industry to suspend manufacture of many long standing...

WHAT'S THE MOST ACCURATE .45 COLT SIXGUN?
September 1, 1999... (HINT: IT STARTS WITH AN "R") For the past three years I have spent most of my shooting time with the first real guns. Notice I said real, not wheel. I defy those who insist on calling sixguns "wheelguns" to find a wheel anyplace on a...

THAT CARRYING CONCEALED GUNS LOWERS CRIME IS NOT RELEVANT TO GUN DEBATE.
September 1, 1999... We are engaged in contrasting two ethical philosophies at war in the gun control debate: utilitarianism and individual rights. The thesis, which we began developing in the last column, is that social utilitarianism ("the greatest good for the...

It's A Small, Small World.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Backup weapons continue to save lives. Sadly, there continue to be cops maimed or killed because they were disarmed and had no second weapon to which they could resort. Consequently, more departments than ever are authorizing-- sometimes even...

INTERCHANGEABLE AMMO.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... When the service revolver ruled the police armory, a common trick was to carry a K-frame Smith & Wesson .38 or .357 for primary, and a D-frame Colt .38 snubby for backup. K-frame speedloaders of .38 Special would feed either gun, and if you...

THE ISSUE OF THE ISSUE BACKUP.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Most big departments and a great many small ones authorize backup guns. A small but growing number actually issue a backup gun, usually requiring it to be worn concealed while on duty. Without naming names, I can tell you that five state police...

Call It "Officer Safety" And You'll Get Anything.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... If you serve in an agency that does not allow you to carry a second weapon, work through your union or fraternal organization to make it an "officer safety issue." Offer the bosses a model policy. If they're worried about an unprofessional...

BRILEY GLOCK BARREL.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Briley's Pistol Division has been doing an enviable job of making replacement barrels for several years. The compact Glock 30 is one of the latest. When I bought one of the new little Glocks last year, I really liked the way it felt and shot,...

LEADING EDGE "HYPERPORT".(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Porting has become a widely accepted method of taming recoil or muzzle rise from hard kicking guns. Most of these are simple holes or slots drilled or cut by EDM (electrode-less discharge machining) processes. The HyperPort from Leading Edge...

AFTEC EXTRACTOR.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... The AFTEC extractor is one of those things that you don't have to have. Consider it an insurance policy. The extractor of John Browning's grand old gun has worked since 1911. Oh sure, once in a blue moon one breaks and when it does the gun...

WILSON SPRING KITS.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... The number one complaint shooters have about a new gun is the trigger pull. Manufacturers are in a nowin situation. If they make triggers light and crisp, their lawyers yell at them, so they make them heavier and the customers gripe. In...

Stand Together Or Hang Separately.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... At a crucial time of rabid anti-gun sentiment, the shooting industry has shot itself in the foot with internal bickering. The occasion was a special White House symposium on "youth violence" held in the wake of the Littleton tragedy. Three...

The Few, The Proud, The Lucky Bastards.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... The U.S. Marines are elite soldiers, but within the Corps is a super-elite unit called Force Recon. Members of Force Recon are specially trained for highly dangerous and specialized missions, however, they are technically not "special forces"...

HEARD IT ON THE GRAPEVINE.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Did you hear... * That Kimber is on pace to sell close to 40,000 pistols for the year. That's double their '97 production and inching close to Colt's industry-leading production of 60,000 Government Models a year. * That Brazil, the...

A Flotsam Of Riflery In A Sea Of Kalashnikovs.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Pictures from the Balkan Brouhaha reveal that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is armed with an eclectic mix of designer firearms. A news photo captured a KLA. guerrilla with a Steyr Scout Rifle while another showed a man with a Barrett .50...

Cogito Ergo Sum.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Tooting one's own horn is gauche, but we can't help pointing out that our "Gun Rights" column in every issue is by far the most intellectually challenging treatment of the subject you will find in any gun magazine. Most such columns are boring...

Next Off The Press: How To Kill A Lawyer And Get Away Scot-Free.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... The publisher of a book called Hit Man, a how-to on assassination, paid an undisclosed sum to the family of a murder victim who was killed in a murder-for-hire scheme based on the book. Paladin Press, publisher of Hit Man, loudly decried...

What Will Crocodile Dundee Do Now?(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Australia recently banned ownership of most handguns and semiautomatic rifles, forcing gun owners to turn in their guns in a massive government-funded "buyback" program. Now the New South Wales Attorney-General is proposing to ban the...

THE PENDULUM OF SHOOTING.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Participation in competition shooting is like a pendulum. Interest in match shooting swings back and forth as guns evolve to meet the game. The Bianchi Cup is a classic example of the pendulum. In the early years, shooting a perfect 1,920...

1994 All Over Again.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... After a weak 1997 and 1998, the shooting industry is enjoying brisk gun sales and a booming ammunition market as the public gobbles up guns due to Y2k fears and concern over new gun control. While robust sales are welcome, the industry only...

B4Y2K.
September 1, 1999... Despite more than three years of increasing discussion and concern about the impending "millennium bug" in the worlds computers. the fact is that nobody really knows the extent of the Y2k problem. When the clock ticks off the first minute of...

All About Gun Powder (Without A Big Thick Book).(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Even though gunpowder is chemically pretty simple stuff, how it burns and how it is made could be the subject for big thick books. The photograph shows several powders used in this experiment and the one thing you can easily see is that none...

The High Pressure Name Game.(Brief Article)
September 1, 1999... Another way of improving performance is to rename an existing cartridge and load it to higher pressures and velocities. The best example occurred in 1929 when police departments complained they were being outgunned by a new breed of outlaws and...